Uhh

"It's not you, it's my terrible choice in women..." (from a someecard)

It's Christmas time soon, and holiday parties are afoot, and needless to say, I'm getting heckled relentlessly by all the guys at work. It's not a terrible way to get bombarded with suggestions and set ups - and I mean, in regards to "Who are you bringing to the Christmas dinner this year?"

Everyone has their girl whom they're bringing to our annual company party, and our secretary is bringing the "guy she lives with". (Which is funny in a dismal, dark, ironic sort of way; she's gone through 2-3 marriages, has a kid with one of those guys, so she said to hell with commitment. She just found a sugar daddy and they shack up.) But she's a great accountant, so there's that.

SO - it's as if my absent invitation RSVP has drawn attention to the fact that I haven't turned it in, and everyone knows I'm the resident single guy, so I get this onslaught with all the guys trying to get me hooked up. It's a lot of things - humorous to begin with, but then when everyone goes home to their women, I think, "God, I don't like this one bit." And he hears me, and he knows me, and my wandering heart needs to bind back to him. Because it'd be just easy enough to say, "Yeah, I'd like to bring your hot cousin" or "Have your girlfriend bring her friend and we'll sit together".

It'd mean nothing, honestly. So there's no point. It'd just be a flirt and nice momentary gratification to my worldly masculinity to say "Yeah, you still got it champ." Which also means nothing. It's a weird quasi heart check. I'll probably end up going to the dinner alone, and everyone won't even notice or remember after the second drink. And I'll make them all laugh, because they expect me to. But I'm not going to get used to this.

And on a side note, I have a sneaking suspicion that God has yet to bring a woman into my life, whatever that means.

But it's also funny (in a dismal, dark, and ironic sort of way) to turn down girls - because I realize how easy it would be to get married and settle and never be happy.

Intercession

To proceed on with this particular post, you must do the following:

1. Click play on the video to listen to the track before moving forward.
2. Listen for 20 seconds and just think. Stare. Listen to your breathing.
3. Read.

Listen.




Ok, this may be bad, but it'll be ok. Things may be good and they'll get worse. Things may be always good, and you'll never see the shadows or feel the incompleteness of a barren abandonment.



When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,  since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

format, ish

This will either consume me, or be the summit in which I rise.

Act I

A cold seat. The sun isn't even out yet, and I find myself rushing out the door, 3 different bags in possession. I'm fumbling for the keys, the damn car is slow to react to the remote lock/unlock apparatus. It's really frigid out, like to the point of giving me the pee chills, making me second guess actually starting the car to leave, or go inside and, well, pee.

I digress, and drive into the still, cobalt morning.


Act II

Act III

Spoiler Alert: Everyone dies. It's only a matter of when, and with or without whom.
I think I said the f-word about thirteen times today. It was one of those days. It was a day when the pile got stacked so high, that I got so overwhelmed that I thought, "What's the use?"

The problem with me is that I am too real most of the time, and mostly fake when it really matters. And I try to be relatable, and I try my damnedest. I resolved that I want to always meet someone where they're at in life, even if the situation is Pluto to my Mercury. We all rotate around the same sun. We all break the same. I get home, after only a few hours of sleep, early morning music, long list of work tasks piling up - and I think I'd give up and move to Barbados if I didn't have an assistant. Leading is hard, because you have to lead. It's not a show, or a performance one night every few weeks - it's really people expecting some substance and life and rawness out of you. Or me, in this case.

Act IV

I lay here in bed, drowning in a sea of blankets. Jameson, Irish Whiskey. No music. No noise. Let the ringing in my ears lull me to sleep.

Another day goes by, and I'm headed somewhere, but I'm not yet on high enough ground to scope out where this is going. God does know, and sometimes tells me.

End Scene

Listen to John Hopkins' album "Monsters"

Photos
Editing
Post
Adjustment
Deadlines
Printers
Proofs
Catalogue
Desig-!n
Backup
Noise
Speakers
Black socks
Laundry
No time for bed making
Shoes scattered
Brain scattered
5 hours of sleep?
Video
Audio
Effects
Lens flare
Not like JJ
Whiskey
Wacom
Digital
Pens paper analogue
Package redesign
Website publishing
Web store redesign
Blogging
Personal blogging
More drinking
Piano, oh thank God, there you are
Write more, read more, God give me proper quiet times, please. I want and crave it.

The onslaught of what I do, and what I do only matters if I'm doing everything else right, for the right reasons. For God's reasons. Maybe I'll feel better in my own living room, or personal kitchen to cook and have some wine after a long day. Lists, they'll kill me.

A few thoughts:

Christmas will be alone again this year. My parents are leaving. My brother is gay and will be at raves. My sister lives with her boyfriend and will be with his family. This is getting pretty old - I'd make a terrible hermit, though I do like some time alone. I think my parents have gone through a lot, as parents, and want away for a week or so.

I've resolved to host a Christmas party this year in the days leading up to the 25th. So, that should help remedy "I'll have a blue Christmas without you..." *sigh*

This weekend I'm recording "Your Love" and I told Steele that I would like to see all the proceeds for the first month or so to specifically go to the Roots fundraiser, then whatever else they'd like after that. In some small way, I want that to be my additional contribution. He told me that they get a lot of emails from other churches requesting it, so that's encouraging - mostly because my heart is to emphasize the entirety of God's attributes, and break this parochial "love and mercy" view of God in the American church. I want people to worship and adore God for his justice and wrath just as much! TO KNOW what they've been saved from, and that his justice is ultimate and right and revere him for that - but most of all that ALL of his immutable attributes are to be known of and viewed so that we may live rightly before him. Coram Deo. I want to keep doing that with music, as God permits.

I'll be working a lot since this is the last month before our big show in Vegas this January. God has graced me with an assistant that is teachable and a quick learner. Next year is already stacking up to be huge too, so I don't know how much this will level out - I just think my threshold will increase and reach a new tolerance. I have a new found respect for my brothers who have families and mortgages and faithfully serve. It's important that I keep focused on God and face whatever he throws my way, since it's the point of no return soon. (Not in a negative sort of way, just that I am facing the scales and having to count the cost of what it means to step forward).

And then there's this dude who looks high as a kite, sitting at the table adjacent from me, and he's staring at me as I type. It's a combination of the THC, Starbucks jazz Christmas mix, and that I usually always smell good. I mean, he looks hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

An old couple walks carefully through the store, taking careful steps to look on and think through which products they are going to buy. They appear small and meek, with many layers of autumn warming attire. Quietly I hear the man whisper something to his wife, but I didn't quite make out what he said. Her smile and heartwarming reaction to him made me think, "It's amazing that they fell in love and grew old together in a completely different time." And a strum of jubilee resounded in my heart for that split second, because I knew that even if they had no family to spend tonight with, they had each other. That was the most important thing for them. They looked like a Herb and Ethel.

Holidays are like malls and airports for my heart. There is always a bustle going on, and always white noise of chatter, music, kitchen clamor, stores simmering with checkout aisles beeping, people going every which way - and then there I am. It's hard to focus, because there's all these people I'm interested in. Where are they going? Why? He looks official and rich, she is good looking and sad. That family flying back to PA are in their pajamas. When all the world goes, these places won't matter, yet they're vital to each of these people, and I really think about that. Standing dead center in the middle of this American tornado watching worlds spin around me, I feel so much sadness because its like everyone forgets the important things in life. The reasons behind why we do what we do. Those moments when you start looking at something and then 12 minutes later find yourself lost in thought, staring blankly into nothing, yet hopeful. For what, it remains to be seen, but hopeful nonetheless.

Airports, holidays, malls. Remember what matters. Remember where you are going.

You wouldn't believe this about me, but I try to keep a low profile most the time. Work can get tenacious with so many people having so many needs and demanding so much out of me. Life can get so full and laborious with going places, meeting people, struggling through issues, and I'm learning the balance between saying no, and being sinfully busy.

I like to have fun, and be silly, and post pictures of my idiosyncratic life, but behind the scenes, I remain pleasant and quiet.

Not knowing a whole lot about a lot of things I don't know about gives me reason to shut up and listen a whole lot. Especially in my unique situation where I have several key people in my life who are high caliber men that have a lot of experience (work, church, freelance, business, music...etc) and they GIVE me opportunity to tag along and get my hands dirty.

I really cannot be more grateful just immediately for the day to day which God has blessed me with. I should try to be more grateful in my outwardness in expression and reaction, but my heart is sponged with the richness that is around me always.

Amidst these, I live, and I pray to God that I can maintain seeing the forrest for the trees, though my tendency is to move into sharp 1080p razor focus. Mist or smoke, it doesn't matter, all I want to do is see.

Good job, Apollo

This world became a lot of things, didn't it boy? A gross awakening of hand outs and slavery. It was all culminating to the Great War. Time kept trancing on - mindlessly, without thought or regards to kings and kingdoms. Death called, the icy grip of ruin swept the plains of modernism, and technology made us see our hearts. We were all blind, and didn't see it coming.

The innocence of forgetting those images, gruesome and haunted, could soil the purest of hearts. A fascination of sci-fi and space travel engulfed the hearts of everyone. We got sick of this place. No longer was it necessary to travel the depths of Indo-China, or scale the Alps when you could get it on a calendar, or watch the YouTube video of it. We all died to the interest of this creation, we forgot the dust from which we emerged. There was this beckoning to go to another world. The moon, Mars, Andromeda. Wherever. We wanted to escape now, for it wasn't enough.

So we all without knowing it acknowledged that we don't belong here, but never asked why we thought that way. I was never salty enough to be remembered tastefully. Just always "that guy".

I memoriam of my life and time back there, then on Earth, I realize I never really did the things I wanted to do. I mostly just did all the things I was supposed to do.

Never feeling the symphony of love and affection was my greatest mistake. Apollo took me somewhere else. Somewhere lonely. Now I live for eternity on pharmaceuticals and artificial air. A barren moon, a cold heart. The crescendo never came to be. Dust. Decay.

Infamy and reverence, we were made to live forever, but not like this. It's not supposed to be like this.

I feel like I have so much to say, but after all the fiascos of today, it's nice to just vent to my Lord and pray.

It was also a blessing to walk into the meeting tonight two hours late and hear my brothers praying for me and my future. Very humbling, very timely from a frustrating evening. Thanking God, holding back incessant weeping. I'm still thinking a lot about what Steele said on Saturday too.

And I thank God for whiskey.

In passing:

There are so many broken people in the city. Walking down the street on a Saturday night, you can't help but notice the people who love to live for the weekend and indulge. Girls with 80% of their boobs hanging out, dudes drunk and looking to get a piece of ass...it's wild how much of this goes on.

Allegedly this is an epidemic is clean, conservative Utah. I can't imagine elsewhere. I don't know why God let me see the things I did in passing, but it did give me a more earnest passion to reach people with the gospel.

The hardest part about personal holiness unto God is remaining separate from what the world does while remaining involved with the things they do.

God will save, but I want to be more militant with zeal and vigilance to share Jesus with people.

All of this, as I'm passing through.

plan for the worst, expect the best.

There have been some things in my life, big and small, that take me by storm any way you cut it. College never paid off, because well, I didn't finish, and even if I did, my time would not have gone towards my job. College is getting paid off, and my 12K in student loans are starting to seem like less of a pile of dirty laundry.

Music was so much a huge part of my life for so long, and that's all I wanted to do. Now, it's the last thing on my mind, but the first thing that takes my free time. All I do anymore is record in the studio and write my own songs. It's the strangest thing - when I wanted it, I couldn't have it. Now that it doesn't matter to me, it's all I do.

God is proving his sense of humor. I get that his kindness is all over this, but it's like "Dude, chill out - I've got it."

I never thought I'd see myself on the road to pastoral ministry, yet here I am beckoned by where I feel the Lord leading me. The call is life consuming, but I am willing and ready as I'll ever be to take this path. When I wanted it, it never happened, but now when I gave it up to the Lord, he put me in these places.

I went from a fierce closed grip, where nothing would slip out, to an open hand that all these trinkets in life can be blown away at any given moment by God's mighty wind of change.

Life is, well, good. Full is a better way to describe it. I make time for things that get thrown at me, but otherwise I'm filling it up to stay busy, and focused at the task ahead.

Next year I'll be debt free, I'll buy a house, I'll help plant a church, and I'll keep on giving my life away. The worst thing that could happen to me, even if all my freedoms are stripped and I never see the desires of my heart come to pass, would be a life lived in disobedience to God. That's the worst thing. Even if my life gets taken, or led to utter ruin, and a slow painful death of persecution happens, even then, it's for my good, because the good will be standing before Jesus, face to face. Real FaceTime. Real perfection. Forever.

May I never utter or think the thought, "Could God?"
May I never doubt or question his sovereignty.
May I always live Coram Deo, before his face worshiping him.

It sounds lofty and transcendental, but the truth of the matter is - by him and through him are all things made and held together, and his spirit lives in me, so whatever the commonplace or situation I find myself, I have that very opportunity to remember and act.

I expect my Lord to meet all my needs, for he knows what I need. That's the best part.

Incomplete

Loves Jesus more than anything. Backbone. Hospitable. Complimentary. Refining. Struggle. Love. Selfless. Serving. Leader. Manages our house well. Quiet. Funny. These are a few of my favorite things. Until then, I'm completely incomplete, except for being fulfilled in Christ alone.

There's beauty before me now, but the most is yet to come. I can keep giving blood.

Simple

Delivery:

There was a man. He was a simple man with a simple house. He had many of the same outfits, and ate many of the same things. He had a quiet life, a life alone, a life with victorian silk wallpaper and always three medium sized logs piled up to throw on the fire. On his way to work every day, he passed a small chapel in the middle of the town to hear the bells toll at eight in the morning. Always it was cloudy with a chance of rain. Always were there flocks of wrens flying from tree to tree, and back up into the spires of the buildings. Quaint, yes, this small world of simplicity was all this man knew, and he did not care to know more than the small routine of his simple life, and his simple house, with his simple ways.

This man grew old, and he never married. He faithfully worked his job until the business offered him retirement. He had meager assets, and several nights by the fireplace reading. He didn't say much, and when he did, he was brief and organized. This man did not have a drinking problem, or a vanity problem, or a gluttony problem, or a lust problem. This man held a moral and positive life.

Throughout his life, he always passed this small, simple chapel. He always looked up to the steeple, and gazed upon the cross mounted atop in wonder. Every day, on his way to work, he looked up to the mounted cross. Although, quite curiously, he never went into the chapel, though he would always notice people walking in, or a door left open where people met inside. In all the decades of walking past, he never left his simple life, in his simple ways. He always looked at the cross, but never looked to the cross. He wondered what it was doing up there, all the way up there, where these birds simply rested until stirring away to other perches. He simply wondered.

One day, this simple man died a simple death in his simple twin sized bed. He was old, and died in his simple room where there sat one dresser, a small mirror by the door, a picture of a cottage by the sea, pale blue walls, dark wooded floors, a small oriental rug. The air was stale, and dust danced in the light that crept in through the white curtains. He had not many friends, and one distant cousin who lived two counties away. No one was notified for a month. He simply died. Passing out of existence in this simple town.

As this simple man burned in hell, he could only in severe agony think back to the cross, and the many years of his simple life that he could have moved out of his normalcy to find out what this cross meant. He was simply delivered to what his comfort had made for him. He didn't mean ill, or have any desire of this place, but he simply went on without having his life changed. As sad as this is, it is simply how it goes.

the life that I loved and lost

Some things aren't really going to happen. Like really.

I won't ever be a secret agent spy, like 007.
I'll never have great hair.
I'll probably never see the road for tour or a musical career - it just isn't practical.
A revolving door of romances will never happen, because I'm not Don Draper, and sleeping around goes against Biblical principles, my principles, and there won't be a television audience anyway.

I wont be a firefighter, or a doctor, or a news anchor. I'll never be a film star, or hang out with Will Ferrell. This country wont get better either - Tadd, Andrew and Matt were all speculating this morning that according to the Bible, things can't get better, because it'll all be horrible before Jesus takes us home.

SO -

This life I had dreamt up, it won't come to be. Insert the life of dream job, or physique, or celebrity, and I won't see it come to fruition. There just isn't time. I can't give my heart away to a different girl every year. I can't give my time to a job that takes me out of the game. I can't not serve God and his people. I have to. It's all that matters.

God's will is going to happen. The people of God are his most precious of all Creation. To tend and care for and serve them is therefore the *most important thing I can ever do. *(After a wife and kids, provided that is a part of God's plan for my life.)

Some other things may happen along the way, but I won't hold my breath, because I'll be praying.
I loved a life that wasn't for me. Loved. Past tense. I don't anymore.
I want the life that God made for me. Future tense. In the moment.

A joyful noise

It's so nice to just relax and write music in my bedroom. Turn the headphones up and just worship the King. Emotive and driving hip hop tracks; sounds and beats that convey a deep and resounding truth of God.

It's so nice to make soundscapes and just escape to a place of lucidity to revel in the idea that God made noise and wavelengths and he knew that it would make my heart sink and drive me to a place to praise him, privately, personally.

It's an incredible experience to sing hymns of old, and bask in the words that speak to the great drama of God and his relationship with his beloved until he calls us home. I always am driven to tears with the veracity and penetration of truth/doctrine/precepts of God's word.

It is a moment of rawness. A song ever ringing in my heart. A joyful noise unto my Lord and King.

Soli Deo Gloria

Milk and Honey

The weight, the wait, the hope of future glory.
I can safely say that Christ died for my sins, and exaltation.
But it's not about my exaltation - it's about me being able to be tolerable in the holy presence of a perfect, immaculate, unknowable, massive God.

To my fault, and great discredit, I forget so much and undermine the doctrine of glorification. I get so caught up in other things - the minutia in life. Big moments I wait for, and miss them. Small moments I kick through like wading in a cool brook and splashing water on the shore like it means nothing. These things mean something. It's all culminating to the final analysis of Jesus' and his beloved.

May it not be said of me that I was disobedient. Sure, I sin. I sin quite a lot. But my heart remains tried and true - I can't go on without knowing God more. But I don't want to be disobedient - to not see the promises of God. I can't think of anything worse than God having to do things in spite of me.

I crave this promise land. I want to go over the mountains, and into this place where foes are no more, and shadows are laughable. No more dark nights of the soul. No more sadness. But I will wait. I have quite the array of things before me to keep me until that time comes.

Bryan really hit it on the head for me in 2 Thess 2:15-17. A great section of verses that serve as an overdue reminder of WHO God is, and what his ultimate work in getting his people. Chosen, Elected, Saved, Redeemed, to be Holy, to be Glorified. Unreal. It's not even about me, and those are the things that get to happen. Lord, keep me. I pray I'm faithful. I thank you for you are always faithful. I crave milk and honey.

"I need answers for what all the waiting I've done means..." - Jimmy Eat World, Kill

Jarring

I woke up at 3AM on the dot. Like jumped out of bed. It was a combination of my phone going off the hook with all these text messages, alarms and notifications, and my dogs going crazy in the kitchen above my bedroom, and the cap of a very bad dream.

A cold sweat, pulsing vision.

I couldn't understand what was going on. I silenced my phone, let the dogs out, went pee, got a glass of water and tried to go back to bed. I was in and out for the rest of the morning, so I'm pretty exhausted right now. And I'm all out of coffee, so I need to pick some up soon.

It was such a weird feeling, upon waking, and I haven't shaken it off all day.

"I wake up, it's a bad dream, no one's on my side..." -Keane

More importantly, I can't think of anything else.

Say it was something else. Tell me that the jewel of tomorrow's promise is fake.

The more I think about where I want to be, the more I see how I need to decide what things I'm going to be particularly good at. I have to stop looking at the tasks ahead like it's marshall arts, or a vocabulary test where I forgot to study for AP English so many times in 12th grade, because I snuck out of school to read Crime and Punishment at a coffee shop where the cops hung out.

There's nothing intangible to fight. There's nowhere to sneak away to. There's certainly no time for Crime and Punishment again, except in the literal sense - that time is taken away, which is a crime, and my punishment is being left here in my 17x17 bedroom, no window, with scores of books, some parchment and pens, and a whole lot of restlessness.

If there was a fire, I have no escape.

When I drive home late at night, after everyone has said goodbye, and I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do in the next 6 years, I imagine this made up place of home where I'll have all these nice fixtures, furniture, decor, guns, ammo, espresso maker, a big living room for people to come over and talk about Jesus, their studies, sadness, new this, new that, the future iPhone 7 when it'll be all see through glass...etc. Whatever. It'll be nice for the purpose of people. It'll be a place where everyone will always want to be. I will cook so much delicious food for people.

A house of good smells, a house of safety. No fake walls. No disingenuous love. I find myself giving my heart to as many people as I can, because since I want to be a pastor one day, I need to get into the habit of giving my life away. Like Steele said, "If I can, I will."

I think about these things a lot. I have a lot of small moments of free time where I'm not having to do something for someone, or be somewhere, or work 500billion hours. Staccato. It's quick. But I think about these things nonetheless.

I can't do it all. I can't always impress or stand out. I have the propensity towards a picaresque image, but I'm not that bad. I will try. I will give my all, for my King.

I refuse to go on 6 more years wondering.